Web manual doesn't fit on screen and wastes too much H-space

This is a full-width screenshot of the documentation website in Chrome 120 without any extensions, which makes the docs unreadable because the most important text in the description simply doesn't fit:

  • the description table text doesn't reflow, but simply hides beyond the screen
  • there is way too much space wasted to the left of the TOC
  • TOC itself should be hideable

Another thing is I'd say that's it's too wasteful to have a single word of a single Argument columnt take so much space, forcing the Description column to take way more lines than needed. I think at least the first column would better just be a full-width line taking the width of the other 3 columns rather than a separate one. It's not like I can use table-parsing functions like in Excel to only show ADMIN, here if I'm in the middle of a long list I don't see the first column's name, so don't even know what the arguments belong to without scrolling up

So maybe a simpler list with indentation signaling hierarchy would be more readable and take less vertical space (could even have all the commands collapsible to be able to see only a single one or to see the full list of commands on a single screen)

ADMIN /k

  • on Turns Administrator mode in in the active Lister. Opus will prompt you for the timeout, after which Administrator mode is automatically deactivated. This function has no effect on Windows XP, or if UAC is disabled.
    Example: Set ADMIN=on
  • off Turns Administrator mode off in the active Lister.
    Example: Set ADMIN=off

link is
https://docs.dopus.com/doku.php?id=reference:command_reference:internal_commands:set

The mobile version is more economical, but I haven't found a way to activate it on the desktop.

1 Like

Thanks for the tip, that gave me an idea - I use a "reader mode" in the browser, and it removes the TOC and also wraps the table almost properly (with only a bit going off-page), though still doesn't resolve the issue of an empty column and general low density, but at least it's readable!

Looks completely fine here, unless I make the window very narrow (for a browser).

You have larger screen, smaller font, and no vertical tabs, so you can affort to waste more space on empty columns and very wide TOCs (the margin before TOC is almost as big as the TOC itself).

But even then, other pages start wrapping text earlier, so they fit the same 4th column's width like Item [Directory Opus Manual]. It's still not good, and I'd still remove the TOC and the first two columns to avoid so much empty space, but at least its readable.

Ate you using a 1680x1050 screen? That would explain some of your requests to save a few pixels in the UI in places. But surely a lot of things work poorly in that resolution these days; it’s smaller than 1080p.

Yes, but also 2560×1600 one. The waste is still there since it's relative, although that screen does obviously fit more

That would explain some of your requests to save a few pixels in the UI in places.

It wouldn't, I've set the initial UI on a much bigger monitor/resolution, didn't see point in a lot of padding then (or lack of alignment, or having useless UI elements like scrollbars, or verbose naming etc. etc.), it's just that with the beta I spent more time to tweak interface and more time writing posts about it

Not really, despite all the questionable UI design trends I actually can't remember a single doc site where it was completely unreadable: it's not just that the text doesn't wrap, but also that you can't horizontally scroll to see it, which other sites would allow you even if the had the same flaw with a wide unhideable TOC.
I mean, I continue to use vertical tabs in the browser even with this smaller monitor because it's not an issue

Support++ I, too, have noticed a lot of empty space and excess scrolling to see desired text.

just change user-agent to mobile)

I've made a change to the CSS on the docs website which lets the code blocks wrap text, which seemed to be the main thing preventing the command tables from resizing narrower.

3 Likes